Mead returns home for New Year   

Steven and Misa Mead have just returned home from an extended tour that has included performing to over 12,000 people in both the USA and Japan. The Besson euphonium artists left on 29th November, returning just in time to see in the New Year. The tour included 80 private lessons, 9 public masterclasses, 8 concerts with bands and 6 recital performances with piano accompaniment. 

The tour began in Michigan in Ohio where Steven performed with the Brass Band of Battle Creek, just a few weeks before he joined up with them again for their hugely successful concert at the Midwest Clinic in Chicago. 
Steven and that Misa then travelled to New Orleans for a three-day residency at Loyola University, performing with the university wind orchestra and giving a recital with piano, before moving to Pittsburgh to perform a concert with James Gourlay and River City Brass to a capacity audience at the famous Carnegie Music Hall. 

Then followed working trips to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, with the Detroit Motor City Band, a three-day residency at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and a concert with the Mountain Town Brass Band back in Michigan. Whilst in Chicago Misa also gave a recital at the Denis Wick Advisory Studio to an audience of low brass enthusiasts, before the pair flew to Japan to perform in Osaka and Tokyo, the culmination of which was an emotional recital in Misa's home city of Kumamoto. 

Steven commented: "It was a mammoth tour schedule but such an enjoyable one for Misa and I. Everywhere we went we enjoyed such a wonderful welcome and the response at events was amazing. The appetite for brass and brass banding in America is growing all the time, and the progress being made through the work of people such as Jim Gourlay and the Brass Band of Battle Creek is inspirational." 

Steven continued, "It was such a thrill to team up with old friends as well as meet many new people on the tour. We did miss Christmas in the UK, but it was very interesting to see how Japan celebrates the festivities in such a calm way! Now I'm back my thanks go to Besson, Denis Wick and the Royal Northern College of Music for their support, although in the next couple of weeks I'm back on my travels to Palanga, so I think we should take the opportunity to enjoy putting our feet up for a little while at least!" 

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